mostly poetry with occasional graphics prompted by the 3 year cycle of the Revised Common Lectionary. Plus some occasional more personal stuff.

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Monthly Archives: August 2014

That day,
when he called us together
and gave us the talk,
changed everything;
our lives included.
No going back to the easy excitement
of those earlier times, halcyons,
when the message was new,
along with the company.

We move on.
The journey becomes more determined,
the actions more considered;
the serious stuff has begun.
It was never a light thing,
but now we talk openly
of the struggles,
the suffering,
the dying.

This chosen road passes
from light to darkness,
and back to light again.
It takes us into the shadowed places,
the dim corners of a world
that waits yearningly for a coming;
for those who might bear even a glimmer,
the smallest spark
of defiant hope.

Like this:

The Bible,
that most ancient collection of writings,
esteemed by some and held sacred by others,
includes traces of racism and religious prejudice.
More than a few fragments,
if we’re able to admit it.
Its stories include a powerful foundational myth
asserting a nation’s superiority
as God’s chosen people;
making the avoidance of such prejudiced conclusions
somewhat problematic.
Occasionally a reckless prophet- type person
came along to question that myth;
they were generally pointed
in the direction of the door.
It is still so.
Even Jesus, the travelling teacher from the north,
seems to have been comfortable enough
with established opinion on this matter.
It took some time,
together with the insistent and intrusive pleadings
of a desperate foreign woman;
but at last, we are pleased to say,
his metaphorical copper coin loosened,
and finally dropped.

Like this:

He came
stepping from wave to wave
defying Archimedes,
and the laws of gravity,
at least according to the story.
This, of course, is a sticking point
for many in our sceptical scientific age,
including me.

“Come,” says the journeying man.
“Come to me,
come with me.
Together we shall travel
to the shadowed places;
where despair is deep, fears imprison,
and worries and concerns threaten to overwhelm.
We shall whisper hope,
touch with love and life,
and bring to birth the peace
for which our weeping planet yearns.
And should the waves rise to engulf us,
and should the primeval chaos
reassert itself to swallow us up,
then we shall sink together;
embracing death
and finding fulfilment.”

This letter was published in the Age Newspaper on Wednesday 30th July.

OPEN LETTER TO CHRISTIANS
ON AUSTRALIAN ASYLUM SEEKER POLICY
July 2014

This letter is an open-hearted appeal for a Christian response to people seeking asylum in Australia. It is a call to church leaders and people to inject a new urgency as Asylum Seeker policies plumb new depths. For two reasons: one, Australian politicians, including the Minister for Immigration Scott Morrison, and the Prime Minister, declare they are Christian. They make this claim while acting in increasingly brutal ways toward people seeking asylum. The Immigration Minister now declares that his pronouncements define ‘reality’ with regard to boats approaching Australia. He is engaging in a ‘politics of concealment’. And, secondly, for years church leaders, agencies and congregations have provided and continue to provide, pastoral support for refugees, while also protesting the policies imposed on Asylum Seekers. It appears to suit politicians to have the church’s pastoral practical assistance – and even critical pronouncements, which may be readily ignored. Regrettably both major parties appear to share this approach.

Although this letter addresses Christians in Australia, it does not diminish the role played by many Australians of various convictions, who visit detention centres, provide financial and emotional support and legal advocacy, and rally on the streets of Australian cities and towns, as they seek to humanise an increasingly inhumane environment, and declare their welcome for people seeking asylum. Not least are the widespread and insistent voices calling on the Australian Government to honour its legal and human rights obligations.

Have we moved beyond mere pronouncements? Some church leaders apparently think so, and have moved to direct action. They recently occupied political offices in various states. Their protest presses the question whether widespread non-violent civil disobedience is now required. True, that suggestion is at odds with a longstanding church attitude that insists on obedience to civil authorities. There is, however, another robust and longstanding church tradition which insists (following the Swiss Reformer John Calvin) that Christians have a duty to resist unjust rulers and oppose their unjust laws.

During the past century resistance was played out in the civil rights movement in the United States led by church people such as Rev. Dr Martin Luther King. In 1930s Germany, the German Confessing Church leaders published the Barmen Declaration as a means of declaring opposition to the Nazi Government. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was but one of a significant number of German church leaders who believed they must act in the name of a higher authority, namely Jesus Christ. Bonhoeffer’s call to costly discipleship recognises that we can remove ourselves from the church.

We are pressed to ask what is required of Christians in the face of cruel asylum seeker policies in Australia? Is it thinkable that churches in Australia might be led to declare that in these policies a line has been crossed? That those who participate in such brutality have removed themselves from the Christian faith?

No doubt such a step will itself be accused of being unchristian! This is not a dispute about mere ‘practical politics’. It concerns basic church teaching and life (doctrine). Faced with South African Apartheid, the church in South Africa called on the world church to assist it in the struggle. The World Council of Churches declared Apartheid to be a heresy and, in the Program to Combat Racism, promoted practical action including economic boycotts by its member churches. There we see a church response that does not stop at making pronouncements but develops its teaching to intervene in situations of injustice. Similarly, some years ago the World Council of Churches was invited to send a working group to investigate and report on Australian treatment of its Indigenous people.

This open letter is calling for urgent and radical action which will break through the political silence practised by the Immigration Minister. It calls on Christians to speak with a common voice with other Australians – and with Christians around the world – to resist the government’s dangerous and brutal policies.

This is not to understate the pressing and necessary work to be done by the Australian government to respond to people who seek to flee to Australia, and the thousands of displaced people in our region. It makes church action all the more urgent. Will that action come from the National Council of Churches in Australia, or from the councils of particular churches in Australia, or from coalitions of various church agencies and movements or, especially, from congregations? Perhaps all of these. Certainly, it will also come ‘from below’. In cities and towns across Australia Christian people will gather together in coalitions of opposition to the present brutalising and concealing policies.

These coalitions will then be a prompt to politicians who claim the name ‘Christian’ and seek to act in opposition to the current Australian government actions. Let the discussion here prompt church action, reaching out to politicians and community leaders who want a different Australia from the politics we are now experiencing. Let us all as brothers and sisters in Christ become accountable to one another. As our brothers and sisters in need call for our help, let us all examine our hearts. We must proceed here with great caution, yet with utmost seriousness, because we know how fragile all Christian witness is, and how prone we are to compromise. With that confession, is it not urgent, now, to declare that those who craft and implement these brutal and hidden asylum policies are removing themselves from the church and Christ’s gospel of grace?

Drafted by the Revd Dr Wes Campbell (Uniting Church Minister retired. Member of Pax Christi)
in consultation with colleagues

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Ken Rookes

Ken is a poet and an artist, among other things. He is also a Minister of the Uniting Church in Australia. In 2011 he self-published a book of poetry, Promptings and Provocations.
Ken currently lives in California Gully, Victoria. He is working out how to use his time in retirement, mostly through poetry and art. From 2013 - 2015, he lived at Willowra, a remote Warlpiri community in the Northern Territory, where his wife, Jane was School Principal.
Most of Ken's poems are responses to the three-year lectionary cycle of bible readings. An exploration of posts from three / six years earlier should reveal other poems responding to the same readings.